For the past nine months, Alexis Coates hasn’t been able to afford health insurance for his 11 employees, and he’s starting to see prospective hires take jobs at companies that can.
“This comes down to survival for my business at this point,” said Coates, chief executive officer of the Baltimore-based software integrator Devnix.
Coates said he wouldn’t mind a 2 percent payroll tax increase — if it meant he could once again afford insurance.
Under a universal health care plan proposed by the Maryland Citizens’ Health Initiative, small businesses would be able to pool their employees to reduce administration costs and get better insurance rates.
“We want to make quality health care affordable to all, particularly small businesses,” Vincent DeMarco, president of the Maryland Citizens’ Health Care Initiative, said at the plan’s unveiling Wednesday at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Advocates and more than a dozen experts spent two years crafting the Health Care for All plan to extend coverage to Maryland’s 775,000 uninsured. The estimated cost is $15.5 billion over five years.
The plan would be funded in part by a 2 percent payroll tax increase on all businesses, as well as a 10 cent per drink alcohol tax increase and 75 cent per pack cigarette tax increase.
Companies already paying for health insurance would see their premiums go down with a larger beneficiary pool, DeMarco said, balancing out the tax increase.
A quasi-governmental entity would administer the Maryland Health Insurance Pool that would cover employees from companies with less than 100 workers.
The state would cover so-called catastrophic care for the sickest patients, easing those costs for private insurance and further reducing premiums, and expand Medicaid eligibility for low-income residents. The plan also includes programs to promote prevention and efficiencies, such as electronic health records.
Del. James Hubbard, a Prince George’s County Democrat, will sponsor legislation for the plan next session, but DeMarco said his organization is now focused on building public support.
The higher payroll tax might be a tough sell, particularly in the fiscally conservative parts of the state like Garrett County, said Jan Naylor, president of Naylor’s Hardware.
But Naylor said this plan would make coverage more fair, allowing small businesses to offer the same coverage as large businesses.
“It may not be perfect,” she said, but “I think it’s an excellent place to start.”
[email protected]
